Produced by Robert Connal, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr) _Thomas Hill Green_ _An Estimate of The Value and Influence Of Works of Fiction In Modern Times_ _Edited With Introduction and Notes By Fred Newton Scott Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan_ _George Wahr Ann Arbor Michigan 1911_ COPYRIGHT FRED NEWTON SCOTT 1911 THE ANN ARBOR PRESS ANN ARBOR, MICH. PREFACE _For a good many years I have used this essay of Green's with an advanced class in the theory of prose fiction. It has worked well. It always arouses discussion, and in doing so it has the great virtue that it imperiously leads the argument away from superficialities and centers it upon fundamentals. Its service as a stimulus to high thinking cannot easily be overestimated. For any student, and especially for one who has known only the unidea'd criticism of fiction so popular today, it is a fine thing to come in contact with a high-minded, sturdy, and uncompromising thinker such as Green is. As Green says of the hearer of tragedy,_ "He bears about him, for a time at least, among the rank vapors of the earth, something of the freshness and fragrance of the higher air." _I trust that this reprint, by making the essay more easily accessible than it has been heretofore, will help to raise the grade of student thought and taste and criticism._ F. N. S. _University of Michigan December 1, 1910._ CONTENTS.